StartProgramming-0-3 工具Tools

Before you can start programming, you will need to gather some tools. This looks like a lot, but if you want to program, these are essential.

在你开始编写程序之前，你需要先收集一些工具。这看起来相当的多，但是下面这些是必需的。

计算机 Computer

Your computer does not need to be the latest and greatest, but I do recommend that you run a programmer-friendly operating system like Linux or BSD. All of the examples in this book will run perfectly on Windows, MacOS, Linux and BSD.

编译器或解释器 Compiler or Interpreter

There are hundreds of different programming languages available for computers these days. In this book we will start with Python (http://python.org/). The language is completely free and is available for a very wide range of computers and operating systems. Their website has excellent instructions on how to get it and install it on your computer.

编辑器Editor

A text editor is different from a word processor. Do not try to edit your programs with Word. It is possible but it is tricky. Python comes with an editor called IDLE, but you may want to try other editors also. On unix-like systems, I recommend NEdit or Kate. On windows you might just want to go with notepad for now, but if you really get in to programming you will definitely want something much better. Some have recommended SciTE for windows. On MacOS, BBEditLite works quite well.

These next two are not essential to programming in general, but we will use them to help us get started:

下面这两个对于我们的编程不是必要的，但是我们打算用他们来帮助我们入门。

Pygame

To make learning programming more fun, we will use graphics. Graphical programming is usually considered a more advanced topic, but with the proper tools it is not much harder, and it will help to make things more clear. Pygame (http://pygame.org/) is a set of python libraries which will need to be installed on your system to help with graphics.

pygsear

As a supplement to Pygame, get the files I made to help people get started with programming. I call them pygsear (http://www.nongnu.org/pygsear/). Get the highest-numbered release from the download page in either .zip or .tar.gz whichever is easier for you to unpack. The file you need looks something like pygsear-0.52.tar.gz or pygsear-0.52.zip